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Avery Apanius May 29, 2018 Colorin Colorado Refection Journal Anonymous. “Using Cognates to Develop Comprehension in English.” Colorín Colorado. New Information First and foremost, I have understood the concept of a cognate for a long time, but I have never known the official name for it. This article taught me that cognates are “words in two languages that share a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. I have learned about this idea before though. In high school, I took Latin for four years, which is the language that heavily influenced the Romance languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. In fact, there was a poster in our classroom that showed a word in Latin and all of the subsequent cognates in different languages, including English. The second thing I learned from this article that there are false cognates as well. There are words in English and Spanish, for example, that are the same or similar, but have completely different definitions. An example of false cognates is pie. In Spanish, pie means foot, but in English it is a dessert. This is important to keep in mind because, although, cognates can be useful for increasing comprehension in the classroom for ELL students it is essential to make sure you’re presenting accurate information especially when representing someone else’s culture and language. Responses to reading There were two important ideas that I saw as significant from this article in regards to the process of using cognates to develop a deeper understanding of the English language. The

implementation of the information uses a scaffolding approach. First, there are activities that can be used to identify and analyze cognates in reading. Next, are a list of activities in order to organize, learn, and present the information collected. One quote that really stood out to me was “students benefit from cognate awareness. Cognate awareness is the ability to use cognates in a primary language as a tool for understanding a second language.” I believe this quote is significant because of how it relates back to everything we have learned in class so far. Moreover, ELL students are not unintelligent, it the simply a language barrier. Through the use of cognate awareness, students can build connections between their prior knowledge in their first language and the new information being processed in English. Agree/Disagree The author identifies several ways on how to develop cognate awareness in the classroom. Regardless what method that is used, I agree that it is absolutely essential to identify the differences between the words in different languages. They would always identify the differences in spelling and sound between the words. Connections to Literacy in the Classroom In my future classroom, I will definitely include a poster that acts as an ongoing list of all cognates that we have identified as a class. It is not enough to simply recognize and discuss cognates that we come across through our reading, but it is essential to have the information visually represented for ELL students. We have learned that it is important to write things out on the board or around the room for ELL students so they have a point of reference. An example of this would be the daily agenda written out. Furthermore, having this information presented in an

accessible way so that the students can constantly refer back to it thus building strong connections between languages. Questions & Responses 1. Cognates are a great way to connect languages while learning English, what other ways are there to dismantle language barriers? Personally, from my experience cognates are the best way to visualize the similarities between languages, but there are plenty of other options to help that process along. For example, in your instruction avoid culturally specific vocabulary such as witches in Halloween. 2. What are some ways to build connections with languages that aren’t romance languages, i.e. Chinese? Even though there aren’t as many physical similarities in the words or letters, I’m sure having a chart with the English word and the Chinese equivalent would be beneficial.

References Anonymous.“Using Cognates to Develop Comprehension in English.” Colorín Colorado, 1 Dec. 2015, www.colorincolorado.org/article/using-cognates-develop-comprehension-english....